David Kallison

Verne Gay

Wilmore’s approach was pointed (as pointed as a sharp stick) and often funny. Most of all, he brought a perspective to late-night TV--as the basis for entire nightly comedy show--that's been missing from late-night TV for just about as long as late-night TV has been around.

Matthew Gilbert

Comedy Central appears to have come up with a worthy partner to “The Daily Show,” with Stewart and Wilmore as the salt and pepper shakers of late-night TV. A half-hour of humor, opinion, issues, and conversation, The Nightly Show has the potential to resonate as it evolves in the coming months.

Robert Lloyd

Wilmore was off to a good start Monday night--a little muted, which is his style anyway, and a little tentative, as would be expected. But he landed some punches and clearly had more than a little fun.

Sonia Saraiya

The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore isn’t perfect, and it might not find its stride for a few weeks yet. But with this first episode, Wilmore and his team are demonstrating that they are not afraid of asking hard questions, whether those questions are about police brutality, representation in film, biracial identity, or how and when women feel safe in public. It takes a lot of skill to boil a complicated issue down to a single question; it takes even more to make that question funny.

Matt Zoller Seitz

An unsteady but very likable debut. ... That's about as good as anyone can expect from a talk show that debuted on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and that's going to spend the next few weeks or months perfecting itself while shouldering the burden of immense and mostly unreasonable expectations.

Robert Bianco

As you'd expect from a new late-night show, parts of it worked better than others, and no doubt tweaks will be forthcoming. But overall, Monday's opening outing got Wilmore off to a solid start. ... It helps immensely that, in his first night, Wilmore already seemed completely comfortable as the show's host.

Tim Goodman

As for first impressions, I liked it. ... Slight nitpicking should not obscure the fact that overall Wilmore was funny; his show was smart and thoughtful, has a bright future and seems an excellent fit with Stewart and the Comedy Central brand.

James Poniewozik

With the necessary caveat that it’s fruitless to “review” a late-night show after one night ... [the panel discussion] is the segment that will need the most work. ... Maybe the most important first impression from a talk show’s first night is simply point-of-view: does the show know what it is, and why it is? Here The Nightly Show really has something going for it.

Josh Bell

Like Stewart, Wilmore is good at using jokes to cut down overblown public figures, and he isn’t afraid to be self-deprecating. His opening monologue is typically the best part of the show.... The shakiest part of the show during its first week has been the middle panel-discussion segment, which features a mix of comedians and political commentators talking about the episode’s topic.

Jeff Jensen

Wilmore had a few bugs in his performance on opening night: He was a little too giggly, and a few times he spokesofast it turned his lines into what-did-he-say? mush. That said, his clear excitement for this opportunity was endearing.

Don Kaplan

While the program as a whole has room to grow, Wilmore's comedy is sharp, solid and filled with keen observations and strong enough to have earned him the distinction of being the only high-profile black voice in late night television.

Brian Lowry

Wilmore exhibited a quickness and light touch about sensitive topics, yet struggled to bring much coherence or flow to the overpopulated discussion that took up most of the premiere. The unknowns, at this point, outnumber the knowns, making an unqualified tip of the hat premature.

He started off with a strong opening monologue.... But the heart of the show is supposed to be a panel discussion between Wilmore, one of his contributors and a guest panel that Monday night featured U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, hip-hop artist Talib Kweli and comedian Bill Burr, but eight minutes wasn't enough time to get any sort of meaningful (or funny, for that matter) dialogue going.... What did work was the "Keep It 100" segment, in which Wilmore posed a tough question tailored to each of his panelists, which they had to answer as truthfully as possible.